Monthly Archives: December 2012

To combat the Tea Party’s misinformation, a rational examination of historical facts is the simple solution. I present three of their fallacies for your review:

#1: We need more guns to combat gun violence. In the last thirty years, we have had 61 mass killings, including the monstrous killings in Newtown, CT. In no case, was the killer prevented from completing the terrible crime by an armed private individual with a gun. Nonetheless, gun rights advocates always claim that if someone with a gun was present, he or she could have stopped the carnage. This is the reason that thoughtful people are working to establish gun-free zones, including schools, colleges, churches and airplanes. Even if an armed person could intervene, gunfire would probably make the situation more dangerous. Furthermore, we now have over 310 million guns in this country, 8.8 guns for every 10 people. Would you feel safer with 100%?

#2: If we lower taxes, the economy will improve. All income classes in the U.S. have been “enjoying” historically-low income tax rates for at least the last 12 years.
Actually, rates have been going down since the 1970’s. Do you believe that tax reduction has led to a robust economy? By not raising additional taxes to pay for additional defense, retiree support, transportation and social programs, we have been brought to the highest deficit and debt in our history. Cutting spending, or any particular programs, will not solve the problem because government, just like a family, cannot survive if income is reduced every year.

#3: The states and not the Federal government know what’s best for their people. The fallacy of this argument is actually tied into #2. One of the most conservative states in the union is Louisiana. I remember visiting New Orleans one year. I met a man in the city who owned a small, one family house in one of the parishes. He told me how happy he was to pay a yearly property tax of $200 dollars. About a year later, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. Governor Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat called out the State Police. I was amazed to learn that the Department numbered 91 officers for the entire state. Federal troops had to be called in.

In another example, a month before the recent deep well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, defunded and eliminated the state’s Office of Well Drilling Safety Management. What followed was the Gulf’s biggest natural disaster that costs the Federal government nearly $30 billion to clean up. Thankfully, not all states are as dysfunctional as Louisiana, but to claim that the Federal government has little responsibility is not only short-sighted but dangerous to state residents.

I write this commentary to encourage you to seek the historical facts surrounding our political problems and come to your own informed conclusions. As a voter, you owe it to yourself to challenge the fallacies that could hurt our society and weaken our nation.

Contrary to what most folks are told my radical feminist friends at Rad-Fem Central, do not huddle together in dark, moist, odoriferous corners of humanity, training the next generation of Femi-Nazis to cut men in sixteen pieces just for fun. Real feminists are engaged in the maddeningly repetitious activity of pushing the revolutionary idea that women are human. These feminists have no problem pointing out the oddly primitive way in which women here in the United States are still held captive by their bodies by a small minority of males and their female helpers who apparently cannot get their head around the idea that women’s bodies are not property, are not vehicles for made for male entertainment or vessels for production of male heirs and possibly units of future production, but just parts of a larger person called a human known as woman.

Thank you Seven Bowie for your thoughts which are welcome at Rad-Fem Central and where we also have this silly idea that even men can be feminists because seeing women as human and deserving of total “liberty” (ask Ron Paul what he thinks about women and their rights to that precious “liberty” he and his libertarian followers like to bleat about so much) just doesn’t seem like that difficult a job to us, even for men.

Yes you read the title correctly. For the past couple of years, women have been subjected to legislative rape, both on the federal and state level as historically high numbers of laws have been passed that thwart their rights to decisions about their reproductive lives and thus to their own self-determination – their rights to make decisions about their own bodies. Scratch just below the surface of all that, and you have what is known as reproductive slavery.

WHAT’S NEXT? BURKAS?

On the federal level we have Republicans refusing to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) because they don’t believe LGBT, students, Native American or Latino women deserve protection from abuse and domestic violence. And in 2012 we had a chamber full of men debating on whether women had any right to birth control whilst they refused to allow any women on their panel or allow any women to even speak during hearings on the subject.

Amidst all these efforts to keep women from having any say about their rights to make decisions about their own bodies are Taliban-like assertions that these same women, while not capable of having any jurisdiction over their own bodies, are somehow responsible for those of men.

Rep. Burt demonstrating why its important to carry guns at the state house.

In a gallant show of concern for over-run PC-style sympathies at the state capital, House Representative John Burt (R, Goffstown) states that flying the state house flag at half-mast in respect of the children lost in the Newtown CT tragedy is another example of the politically correct (otherwise known as sensitive, caring and considerate) folks have gone too far this time.

As Susan the Bruce points out quite clearly, Burt knows how and when to show sympathy and concern for children by voting against extending mental health care services for children and voting against the anti-bullying law as well.

Good show Burt! Burt explains that he’s concerned too and thinks its time to arm teachers with guns. Total genius we say, because killing kids has shown to be such a good solution in the past, why not turn schools into an all-out war zone? Teachers have got a bad rap in our society that’s for sure and as recent history tells us there’s no better solution for frustration than a warm gun.

In fact, as William Tucker of Miscellany Blue tells us Burt also recently announced that he believes laws are made for breakin’ and that’s just what he’ll do, as in carrying his weaponry where ever he pleases, whether forbid by law or not. Because well, nothing should ever get between Burt’s itchy trigger finger and a short shaft, not even public safety or common sense.

We encourage everyone to let Burt know what they think of a legislator empowered with making laws , disrespecting the laws already written. Here’s his contact information as posted on the NH state representative’s roster:

In this article from the Chicagoist, workers and protesters demanded that the minimum wage be raise to a living wage level of $15/hour. As reported below, 21 people were arrested but sympathy among even the arresting cops existed as quoted in the story.

We need more of this action, more everywhere across the country as people are pressed to work for less than what is required to survive. Contrary to popular opinion and even apparently the opinion of some unions, “protecting the middle class” is not what unions are all about; they also must be about raising living standards for everyone.

The people who serve the middle class — the people who work on weekends, holidays and nights, who turn their hotel sheets, who smile and say “Thank you come again” because if they don’t they’ll get fired all serve many who already make a living wage, who enjoy the protections that unions brought them.

It is in the interest of all Americans to raise the living standard for everyone so that everyone can live a decent life and participate in the economy in a productive and meaningful way.

Center for American Progress has an excellent in depth article, that we recommend everyone read, on how the Right to Get Union Benefits Without Paying for Them hurts the “middle class”. Now one would ask, if we’re against classism, why do we find this article so good?

Well, because the article analyzes the economic truths about our current capitalist system. Its hard for most anyone to deny that the numbers that keep coming up everywhere don’t show that the capitalists and their resulting plutocrat class benefit by squeezing workers to their breaking point — workers are nothing more than a commodity nor different than oil shale, natural gas or water; get as much as you can out of it, as cheaply as possible and then let someone else worry about the resulting damage.

The problem of course with the Americans for Progress analysis is that it supports a frame of “middle class” because some geniuses somewhere get the willies thinking about rubbing ideological elbows with the lumpen proletariat.

Well, here’s a clue; we’re all proletariats, so if you work for a wage or as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, are doing your own thing as a “self employed” (meaning non-covered, under the table employee) “independent contractor” then you are a worker, you trade your labor and time for money. You don’t have extra cash in the bank to speculate on stocks, business ventures, investments or what have you; your money goes to supporting you and that’s all you got.

Read the article, spread it around, but never forget that we’re all in this together and the ultimate goal to achieving real justice for all and democracy is the destruction of the hierarchy of oppression that capitalism requires to exist; destruction of classism and oppression altogether and the creation of a just, egalitarian socio-economic system. Its possible.

Finally, unfortunately a little too late as Michigan, in a heavily controlled and blocked manner managed to pass the “Right To Work” bill in one of the traditionally strongest union states in the country. A Democratic Rep from Grand Rapids, Brandon Dillon had finally had enough and called bullshit on the entire lot. Standing before his fellow legislators he hammers them hard on their slimy tactics in keeping the people from voicing their opinion on this bill before being voted on or allowing amendments, or even allowing the public in to view the voting.

Representative Dillon deserves a pat on the back for his courage in being a truth-teller in front of the fools and stooges who have answered to the ALEC agenda of destroying American labor and breaking the backs of working people across the country.

Click here to get to his website, send him a note, give his office a call. We need to encourage those who speak truth to power. This man has principles and we need more of that, what’s most telling is that he points out that his district is not a strong union district; but he demonstrated the ability to see the big picture and not just the interests of the people in his district only.

On Sunday, January 20th, activists Brenda and Woullard Lett will be hosting a discussion on the Michelle Alexander book “The New Jim Crow”.

The event is free and will be at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 669 Union Street in Manchester at 11:45 am. The event will be informal with a potluck lunch (please bring something to share). Please RSVP by registering for the event here.

Michelle Alexander has opened up the discussion about how racism has continued to permeate our criminal justice system and other areas of our society, effectively keeping in place a system similar to the southern Jim Crow racist laws of the past.

This issue and awareness of Michelle Alexander’s book is a must-have for all of those concerned about the current movement to privatize prisons across the United States and the troubling elements of denial of justice that comes from that.

This interview gives an excellent overview of the topics covered in her book:

This is an open discussion to begin to explore ways in which can work to undo these oppressive cultural systems and free all of us finally from the tragic past of race-based oppression and move into a more just future. Excellent summary of Jim Crow and the new prison industrial complex:

Today is a global day of action for ratification of International Labour Organization Convention No. 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, which establishes the first global standards for the estimated 50-100 million domestic workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom are women and girls. Six countries have signed on to date.

Samuel Gompers dies at the age of 74. Gompers served as president of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 to his death. What does labor want? Gompers said, “We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful and childhood more happy and bright.”